Termination 101: How Smart Leaders Fire Without Breaking Laws, Trust, or Your Business

2004, you completed your MBA. How much time during your MBA did they spend teaching you how to fire people?

I don't think they even taught us how to get hired.

Right, right, right, right. Termination seems like a topic that we should probably talk about because from the HR perspective, I think a lot of people do it wrong.

Oh yeah. Almost everybody does it wrong.

Love this. That's. That's what we're going to talk about this week. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the business fix. So before we, before we turn the cameras on here.

Yes.

We were talking about how you thought, ah, it would be fun to go for your PhD.

Yeah.

My thought was I would rather stick my hand in a screen door and slam it repeatedly. I may not have said hand, but yeah, just anything in a screen door and slam it repeatedly. What makes you think that's a good idea? I want people to hear this.

I think it would be fun. It's not something I've done before. Additional learning and just. Yeah. A continuous improvement and achievement.

I haven't driven off a cliff before, but I mean.

Yeah. Why'd you get your PhD, Chrissy? Because I was bored. Like, that's. Yeah. In essence, like, let's do it.

It's interesting because when we got talking about that and I mean with stuff, you've got obviously a lot going on to the kids. We're starting to get into summer here so that their schedules change, which means your schedule kind of changes. You've got one that's doing.

I've got one that's in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon for an intensive six week program. And then one that I'm like, where can I send him? So he's doing some sleepaway summer camps a couple times. So I'm like, I've got time.

Good.

I could get my PhD. No, no, you cannot, Chrissy. Not right now.

I think you could do it.

I could.

I think it would involve some hair.

Loss and probably divorce court, so I don't want to do that.

Well, when I said hair loss, I was meaning Steve.

Oh, Steve. Yeah, yeah. All these like 208 pounds. Yes. No, I don't want to do that.

Right, right, right. Yeah, you would lose 208 pounds.

Right.

That. That might be, may not be the right thing for you to do coming up here. So let's, let's maybe table that.

I'll table it until the kids are out of school.

You will def. Defer that?

Defer. Yes.

That. That makes A lot of sense.

Yeah.

Let's talk termination.

Okay, let's do it.

The deep breath before that just says, oh, we've both had to do that.

Yes. Repeatedly.

Yes, yes.

It's a part of life.

I have a great story about that from 10,000 small businesses when they had us, when we went through that exercise of how to discipline an employee.

Yes.

Um, the two guys that were up there doing it. The one. His name is Carl. He's since passed. The sweetest guy on the planet. It was like watching someone hunt that just wanted to hug the deer. They were just going to hug the deer to death.

Oh, no.

It was like 25 minutes of, you're.

Doing great, but you're not doing great.

Correct.

So they don't know what they did wrong.

Correct. And I mean, this is a role playing exercise. So they said, employee A screws up all the damn time, but employee A is liked really well. Well, so he's like, we. We really love you. Yeah, we really love you. The fact that we both said that at the same time is just. So then the. The person that was running the class goes, hey, is there anyone willing to be the firing employer? And there was a woman who was the. Was going to act as the employee. She's like, look, I've never been in a situation of having to been fired, so I would like to be the person that gets fired. So I know what it feels like.

Feel it in a safe space.

Right.

Okay.

The person running the class goes, no one volunteers for this. She goes, josh willing to do that as soon as I say yes. Natalie goes, a. And the. The woman running the class goes, what, What? Why did you have that reaction? And she goes, this is going to take about two and a half minutes.

Yes.

And it did. It did it, it. It really.

What?

I mean, the first thing when someone's considering termination.

Yes.

What is the first thing that they need to look at and keep in mind before they sit down with an employee, before they. Before they ever get to, like, start starting paperwork?

Okay. First, I would tell them that termination is not just a gut decision, it's also a legal one.

Ooh, I like that.

So you have to be careful. You have to understand that at will employment, especially in Ohio, it's not a blank check. Just because you terminate someone doesn't mean you should do it without cause or documentation. Because every termination should be rooted in business necessity. I mean, it's not emotion, it's not impulse. This is what is needed for the good of the business. The other is understanding, protected Classes. So making sure that you're not committing any discrimination, not violating discrimination laws. I mean, whether you have five or five hundred employees, you have to know what those rules are or have someone who can guide you along those rules. I always ask yourself, would I be making the same decision if the person were someone else? And that doesn't always. It doesn't just mean, from a discrimination perspective, would you be making the same decision if the person had been there for 10 years? And sometimes when it's the. We don't want to fire that person because they've been here forever. That's a question you should be asking yourself because you have a revolving door of other people that are in the same department because that person is causing the issue. So make sure that you're thinking about those things. And the last thing that I would say, and I will say it three times, is to document, document, document. So. Because if it's not in writing, it didn't happen. So, you know, track your coaching conversations, your performance reviews, your policy violations, not to punish everybody, but to show that you were clear and that you have a consistent pattern that supports your decision.

Like when they say, cover your butt, it's very much about like, they talk so it doesn't get shot.

Yes. Cya. Cyb.

Please correct. The thing that I always like to say with that is you need a lot of paper to stop a bullet. You do make sure you have that paper covering your butt so you do not get shot.

Yes. I mean, I think it's important to document now. There are points where, I mean, and we've had this at clarity, where someone will call and say, can I terminate this person? And we're like, yes, you can terminate them. Now do I need documentation? You already have sufficient documentation. Well, maybe I need just a little bit more. And so we go through this process of 90 days or 120 days, and that turns into six months. And it should have. You know, you could have terminated this person six months ago and you've prolonged and damaged your business a little bit longer. So sometimes it's important to understand you need to be. We talk about being slow to hire, fast to fire. It's important. You just have to make sure that you're following some of these rules and you're. And you're keeping yourself covered.

Let's talk about the at Will piece.

Yeah.

Because I know there's some people that are like. There's some people that say they aren't a cultural fit, which in many cases just. I don't like them. Yeah, I, I hear that as the excuse most often when they're like, I'm not fond of that person. They're not a cultural fit. They try and swap those two. And it's, it's not always the case.

Yeah.

When it comes to that at will piece, you. You went through that quick enough that a lot of people think that, hey, I can hire and fire at will. You can, you can, but it's that, like, why shouldn't you?

Well, there's a couple things. One is it can really harm your culture if you're not. So first of all, I would say if you're firing faster than you're hiring, like, if you've got a revolving door, like it's a constant replacement, that's a question for you. Like, what are you doing wrong in the hiring process? If it is, this person never fits. We can never keep a salesperson. Can we not keep a salesperson because you didn't define expectations. Can we not keep a salesperson because your customer service department makes your salesperson miserable, so they don't want to work there anymore? I mean, it's. What is the thing that is causing that issue? So I would say that's important. At will or not at will, cause or for cause are very different things. So you can let people go. You can have a revolving door in your organization depending on how long you keep them. It's also going to cause some issues for you and costly unemployment rates. So that's the other part is oftentimes people are like, I fired this person. I don't want to pay them unemployment. You documented nothing. You will pay them unemployment.

I've seen that so many times. I mean, yeah, they just like, we, we fired them.

We're going to die on this hill. Well, you can keep appealing it and we'll, we'll walk you through the paperwork of how to appeal it, but it's.

Not going to happen. Right. You're going to pay us hourly for this.

And often, oftentimes. What, what's important too is if you're letting somebody go because they weren't a culture fit, that's on you. It's on them. But at the same time, like, give them the opportunity to move in another direction. Unemployment, they're not going to be on it forever. They're going to find another job.

So it's interesting you say that. I. The at fault piece I like there, when I was at the truck dealership, I mean, I looked at roughly 170 people when someone left or got fired. I mean, there's some people that once again, just couldn't show up. Okay, that. That didn't hurt me that much. But when someone left or got fired, I always will. Like that was. That's on me. No matter what. If someone got fired, typically, the way I've always looked at it was I did not give them the right tools or I didn't put them in the right position. If it's for attendance, well, okay, that's not much I can do about that.

No, you don't show up. You don't show up.

Right. But for any of those other reasons, I always took it personally. Now, granted, that never stopped me. Oh, I guess I screwed this one up.

Doesn't stop me either. No.

Lesson learned. Yeah, I screwed this one up. Got it. Once again, it goes back to how I started the last episode. Saying I'm perfect.

Yes.

Because that's the expectation is I am totally right when it comes to that documentation. We talked about this with setting expectations, but I kind of want to dive back into it a little bit because I think this is a big point. Does all this documentation need to be. Well, the first one is a red slip.

No.

The second one's a yellow slip. And by the time you get to the pink slip, you're just out.

No.

What does this documentation need to look like?

It can be emails. It can be. We had a. This is an email documenting the conversation that we had. This is a note to file. You can do a formalized form. You can do a performance improvement plan. You don't have to. We have the clause in the different types of documentation where it says, you know this. The next step is up to and including termination. I can skip any of the steps if I need to. Especially when you're dealing with at will. You're not dealing with union. I mean, again, this is not legal advice, but you can skip the steps if you need to. As an employer, you've got lots of options. But the important part is if you're really working towards a space where you're going to deal with fighting unemployment, you want to make sure you have all of those documents in place.

It's interesting you say that because we. We had a struggle with that earlier this year. Or actually it was last year.

Okay.

Gosh, years run together.

I know.

I'm still not writing 2023 on checks, though.

Good job.

Because it is 2025 where someone did try and fight it and I'm like, look, they. They didn't show up.

Yeah, here's the documentation. Right.

They just frankly didn't show up. I've got four instances of saying, and like, you've got two more times before you're terminated. You've got one more time before you're terminated. The next time we talk about this, it's going to be your termination. And they got terminated. And Bureau of Unemployment said, oh, okay, got it.

Thanks. It makes it easy if you have cameras, use them, document it. So I mean, a lot of times with attendance, if you're in manufacturing, you've got, okay, this person said that they were in their station from this time to this time. I'm going to check the cameras. Okay. They weren't there. I'm going to terminate them. You can't because you've got the evidence saying it. So I mean. But also know that if you're going to use those tools, you have to be consistent and you have to use them for everyone. If one person gets multiple chances and another gets let go immediately for the same issue, that can sometimes be a red flag, not just for compliance, but for your company culture. So it's important if you have the employee that's been there for 25 years and they show up late every day and the new person shows up late twice and it's the two strike rule, but that person doesn't have to. What message are you sending and what message are you sending to everyone else in the organization when you have that other employee who can potentially be toxic? The.

So here's my question that's going to stem from that. The 25 year employee may be a key role.

Yeah.

The yeah. That you used there tells me you are experienced with this, that how do you fix that?

What do you mean? Like, how do you fix that?

How do you fix that problem? Because like so many companies have that 25 year employee and they're like, I can't fire them.

They came with the building, they've been here longer than me. I'm related to that person.

Right. How do you get past those things?

I mean, part of it is bringing outside hr. If you're really that concerned about it and you don't have the wherewithal to even feel empowered to make that decision, bring somebody in that's a neutral third party that can help coach you through it. So that I would say is number one. But the other is how much. And this is something, I mean, I've dealt with this in my organization. Um, and I've done it the right way and I've done it the wrong way. So. And I had at one point in time someone looked me through. How many more people are going to leave? How much more business are you going to see go out the door? How much more pain are you willing to take to enable this person to stay there because they are damaging your organization? I think sometimes we get so afraid because that person knows so much, or we've worked with them for so long, or we've done life together for so long. But here's what I will tell you, Josh. You can hire other people to do that job if it is a key role, and you don't understand how that role works. It sounds like a great opportunity to update our standard operating procedures. Let's document what this looks like. If they don't want to share how they're doing their job, record them, shadow them, you can make it. You can figure this out. And even if they won't show you, I bet if they got hit by a bus, you'd figure out how to deal with it. So if you terminate them, you're probably going to be able to figure it out, too.

That's the. That's the line that I was kind of waiting for with that is. Yeah. I mean, so many people don't understand when it comes to these, like, tough terminations. Like, this is a key role. Yeah. A bus could do the termination for you could. Right. There's so many different things that can happen. I mean, an illness that puts them out for a month, month and a half, a heart attack, whatever.

Or they win the lottery and just say, peace, I'm not coming back. Like, and you've been dealing with holding their job for them. I mean, you've in essence, created problems in your organization because you wanted to protect this person. Then they're like, peace, I'm done. Or I got $3 more an hour. I'm out. I mean, it happens. And I've sat in that situation and been like, what do you mean? I have, like, died to keep you here, and now I'm. You're gone.

Yeah, that's it. It's interesting you say that, because to me, what's so funny is we both talk so much about keeping people, making sure our employees are happy, making sure people want to do the things, make sure we've set the expectations for people so they can do the things, helping people do the things. And then when we talk about this, we're like, stop doing the thing. Get the hell out of here.

Yes, we've made the decision, and we're done. I have a very long fuse until you light it.

It's funny you say that. And I like that, too, because to me, I see it in so many cases where people are just afraid of change.

Yes.

And what sucks is, is to me, I see this from both sides. As an employer, you're going to see a lot of change. The culture is going to change. And it's like. I mean, I make a ton of analogies between work and, like, personal, like, whether it be dating or Roman romantic life. Because there. There's a lot of things that are similar.

There are.

People are just afraid to change. They will stick in a. Just a terrible relationship for them for years.

Yes.

Because, well, you know, hasn't stabbed me yet.

It's not that bad. Right.

It's not that good either.

Like, you don't like coming to work anymore. If you're the business owner and you don't want to come to work because of the people on your team, that's a red flag. That you've got the wrong people in the wrong seats on your bus.

That's a big red flag. Yeah. If you don't want to come to work, there's a. You've done something wrong.

Or if your team members don't want to come to work, if you have high performers that are now dreading walking in the door, you got to fix it.

And there's so many signs of that.

Yeah.

The. The one that I always see is the. The one that irritates me all the time is the living the dream. As soon as you have an employee come in and say, I'm living the dream, you're like, time out.

What's that dream mean? Nightmare.

Right. Let's go. Let's go ahead and let's grab a cup of coffee and a donut and let's talk. Because that. That is, to me, is when you need to start looking at, like, do I need to get rid of someone else? Because there's an issue with this conversation for you. We've both talked about this. We have a similar style when it comes time to terminate someone.

Yes.

You even said that.

Quickly, fast, effective, out the door.

The story. Tell me the story again about how your other managers and employees get frustrated when you terminate someone because they don't have time.

Oh, because I terminate people in about 90 seconds. They don't have time to box their stuff up because I'm walking them back to their desk while everyone's boxing things up and it's awkward. Or someone else is walking them and then they're walking them to the parking lot to the point that now we're chasing them in the parking lot saying, stop, we need to give you this other box. So I.

That sounds like that has actually happened.

Yeah, it has. And they're like, could you please take a breath? I'm like, I can't. Because we're going to have a very quick conversation, and you need to understand that we know this is coming. We have our paperwork in place. We have made the decision that we're letting this person go. So it's like military precision when we terminate someone. In part because I'm too fast, I guess. I mean, it's just, I thank you for the time that you've been here. It's no longer working. This is going to be your last day. We're going to pay you through this date. Do you have any questions? And if they ask anything that is going to be debated, I just get, like I said, it's just not working out. We're not going to have a conversation about it. They are not surprised when they get to this meeting.

They just could be.

Terminations are not a surprise. And if they are a surprise, it's one of two things. They're delusional, which can happen. But the other is they had you failed to give them any expectations.

You screwed up.

You screwed up, and you've screwed up to the point where they're not even. It's not redeemable. And the greatest opportunity that you can give them is the exit of your organization into an opportunity that'll be good for them. Because you clearly were not a good fit. And it was you. You were the problem. So. And I own that there's been a couple times in termination where I'm like, look, it's not working. It's not you, it's me. I'm not going anywhere. So you got to go somewhere. So I don't say it that way, but that's in essence, the summary.

And all I could think of is the episode of Seinfeld where George is like, I'm the master of, it's not you, it's me.

Pretty much.

That's what I find interesting about that is. And I want to go back to you said the military precision. I have been in the room where people have tried to do the comforting thing, and it just me saying that made you uncomfortable, which I found hilarious in saying that. I find the more you talk.

Yes.

The more opportunities you have to squarely stick your foot directly in your mouth. And I say, cause yourself a legal issue. I was about to say, I say that both from a personal, professional, and legal direction. Yes, this Needs to be. I don't want to necessarily say rehearsed. Yes, but it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Just to go in to say, look, I mean my go to has been, look, I'm sorry we need to terminate the relationship at this point in time. I wish you nothing but the best in the future. I glad that you've been here, but we have to terminate the relationship. And if they say why once again, I usually point back to the stack of paperwork that is sitting there on my desk. Or I can just say, look, this is a decision that we've made. I have also had employees say, but you know, I'm really well liked here and without hesitation. And I said yes. And that will be our problem to deal with.

Yes, that's well said.

Other than that, I mean, the more you say, the more opportunity you open yourself up to harm. And it's just harm. Like I said, personal, professional and legal.

It is.

Is there a legal tale that you have heard or seen that has come from firing that way that we can tell as a cautionary tale.

Cautionary tale. The over explaining this is what you did wrong, but they didn't have documentation to back it up.

Ouch.

Or they're emotional. If you cannot terminate someone and be void of emotion or have a little bit of empathy but not be a jerk about it, then you shouldn't handle the termination. Hire someone. Bring in outside counsel. Like if you got to use your attorney, use your attorney. If you need to use an HR consultant, they're usually less expensive. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never terminated someone before before, talk to someone who has. Always make sure you have a second person with you. So if you have a consultant who can walk alongside. We usually know when it's someone's first termination because they say, I need to fire this person. And then like 20 minutes later they call and they're like, I don't know if I need to fire this person. We're like, have you fired anyone before? Like, no. Or you get a lot of questions the week.

This is your first time, huh?

It's your first time or we're going to fire this person five weeks from now. If you know you're going to terminate that person, why are you waiting?

You shouldn't ever wait. It's just an opportunity for stuff to.

Go sideways, for things to go sideways, for you to. I mean, you're not going to change most of the time you're not going to change your mind or we're going to put this person on a performance improvement plan, but really, we're going to fire them in six weeks. Then why are you doing that? Right. Because you're setting yourself up for a potential red flag of, you know, you intentionally did this to me. So, I mean, you don't. You may not have cause for a lawsuit, but that doesn't stop anybody from filing one. And that's something you've got to defend as an employer. So just have your ducks in a row.

The thing that I find was interesting, too, is the directness, to me, is the kind way to do it.

Yes.

If you do it from a point of, hey, look, this sucks for you. Not this sucks for me.

Yes.

It sucks for everyone in the room. It just sucks. There's nothing fun about it.

No termination on both sides.

In most cases. There's nothing fun about it.

No.

But to me, make sure that you know that it sucks for that person.

Yes.

And just do it. You can be kind while still being direct.

You can be.

Is the big thing. The other piece to that that I love that you said is it's typically not a bad idea to have someone else in the room.

Yeah.

Years ago, in one of my first management positions, I sat down and talked with an employee, and her numbers were low. I just. I took her into the conference room and said, hey, look, we need to get this up. I knew there were some issues at home at that point in time for her, and I'm like, we got to get back to the minimum.

Yeah.

And her and I just had a short discussion about it, and I said, look, you think we can get there? And she's like, yeah. And I said, great, if we can get there in two weeks, I'm not even gonna write anything down.

Yeah.

A few minutes later, the owners of the company call me as soon as I go back to my desk, and they say, what was that about? Because they saw me taking her to the conference room, and I said, just performance issue. We're polishing that.

We're coaching.

Right. We're. And I'm like, I talked with her about it. She realized it's an issue, and we're gonna. We're gonna change it. And I said, she's got two weeks. And I said, then. Then we'll. If it's not done in two weeks, we're going to start documenting it. And they're like, you're gonna fire this afternoon? I'm like, what.

They want.

They wanted people to fear them.

Yeah.

So that's where this came from. So that's not how I do stuff. That's why I quit there shortly after that. What was interesting is they're like, they're like, when are you gonna do it? And I'm like, well, it's Friday. We'll do it at 4 o' clock.

Like normal people do. Yeah. Right.

I said, what time will HR be here? Because HR worked remotely for them, and they're like, they're not coming. And I said, they're like, you're going to do it in that conference room. And I said, oh, you would like her to own this place?

Yeah.

You want me to fire, go in a room with no windows and fire a female employee?

No. Right. No.

Right. I was like, I don't, I, I, I don't want that kind of headache.

No.

So, yeah. To have someone else in the room with you. Yes, it is a, is a good deal just to have that second set of eyes, second set of ears, to know everything that goes on. Now, what I will say is I have been on the receiving end of that. It is hard, but that second set, that second person was in the room, like, looming over me and I'm like, am I, am I going to get beat up?

No. You sit together. You're a united front. You are, you are not the heavy. That's not how that works.

That's. I was like, are they going to, like, drag me out of here by my ear or something or what's going on? So, yeah. I mean, I've seen so many places do this so poorly.

Yes. And I would say dignity matters.

Yeah.

And it really matters. To the point of you want to avoid litigation, Dignity matters. So do not have a public termination that, like, schedule a private meeting. Let the person gather their things discreetly or somebody gathers them for them. You get them to the door. Be mindful of their humanity. I mean, it's really important. Regardless of what mistakes they have made in your organization, dignity matters. And if you want to protect your organization, you will protect the employee or former employee's dignity. Because there is nothing that can go sideways faster than if you, you step on somebody's dignity. Most of the time. When we look at litigation as to like, why is this employer having this issue, this, because they publicly humiliated or that person felt publicly humiliated and all they want is dignity.

It's interesting you say that because I have seen it go sideways in another way also, where an employee was told that they were going to get fired that afternoon.

Why?

Right.

Don't do that. I listening listeners, don't tell people when you're going to Fire them right until you're ready to fire them.

I only said that I heard this and the look on your face said you were going to come across the tape. I've never done that. Is you highlight panic attack you should do. We're going to take a short commercial break for Chrissy. No, to me it was, I watched it happen. Is. And look, let's face it, if an employee is having performance problems, everyone knows.

Yeah. It's not a surprise to anybody.

It's not a surprise to everyone. They probably know that they're getting fired that Friday because hey, we said look, if your numbers aren't here by this date and time, this is going to happen. They know. The people around them know because their performance changes. How they do things change. I mean it. There's not a big secret here but by golly, if somehow it gets leaked out that at 3 o' clock Bob's getting the ax, guess what? Bob knows at 8:30.

Oh yeah.

The things that I have seen go awry from this as Bob visits every adult site he can. Bob visits every spam site he can. Bob.

Or Bob downloads your entire sales manual and sends it to a competitor and you don't catch it until three months from then anything. There are so many things that can happen.

I just, to me it's, you have to do this with kindness, you have to do this with empathy. You have to do this directly because otherwise people are just going to.

Yeah. They click on all the phishing emails and it is having a problem. So many, there are so many things. If you know you're going to terminate someone, just do it. Don't give them the opportunity to, to cause problems in your business.

What is. And, and I always like picking your brain for examples here because you have some. And I, I know you get to walk that tight rope of like, okay, look, I have to keep private here. But in the same sense, what is the worst thing that you have seen happen from a termination to the remainder of the employees in a company?

Meaning.

And I mean I can give you my example.

Yeah, give me your example.

To me, it, it, I have watched it where someone got fired.

Yep.

There were some missing expectations and all of a sudden it set panic through the company.

Oh yeah.

Everyone is like, oh, they are just coming through here with a machete and we're all going to lose our jobs and like probably two thirds of the staff started looking for work.

Ah. So we forget sometimes when we're terminating people that our entire team is watching us. So how you handle a termination Sends a message to every person in that organization. Everybody. So if you do it with respect, professionalism and clarity, you'll build trust. If you do it with going to the, in the windowless conference room on a Friday, even after we just basically said you're in a performance situation, that's if you're doing firing from a place of fear, it does, it can wreak havoc in an organization if it's a key employee. And there was a major issue, let's say employee embezzled. But they were. Everybody loved them. It was like grandma. They were everybody's grandma.

It always is.

It is.

You never see that the embezzlement people are never the guy. It's never the skeezy looking guy. It's always grandma. Whenever you see him on news, it's always grandma.

She celebrated everybody's birthday. Everybody loved her. She was a model employee. She was stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Exactly. But if you don't say anything and look, you don't have to say, look, we're pressing criminal charges. We're doing it. You can just say some things have come to light and we've had to separate employment. How you communicate with your employees is important. So being empathetic with them as well. Because again, some of them are losing team members that maybe they cared about. Most of the time when you have a termination, it's usually, oh, yeah, we kind of figured that was going to happen because they weren't a performer or it is. Thank goodness you did that. We've been waiting for you to do that for years. Especially when it's a toxic employee. And when it's a really toxic employee, there may be some additional work that you have to do within the organization to rebuild trust within your management. So thinking through that too, I was.

About to say that's one that people don't often think about is what do we need to do? When you terminate someone, it's not over. You need to go through, you need, you need to kind of triage with your staff to make sure that. And I mean, if you've done groundwork, yeah, it's easier.

It is.

If you're, if your culture is fit and healthy, this is pretty easy. You go through, you slap a band aid on it. Everyone's like, okay, we're good. Yeah. If you're unhealthy, it's sutures, it's some rehab. It's some things of that nature.

Absolutely. And thinking that it's important to support your remaining staff. So after you have that termination, you check in you acknowledge that there's been a shift in the organization, then you reaffirm this is the direction that we're going in. So it helps everyone move forward without confusion and eliminate some of the anxiety.

There's anxiety around work sometimes a little bit.

Just occasionally.

I'm not anxious about work ever. No, no, it's. It's. As a business owner, it's perfect. I'm just always perfectly relaxed.

Okay, that's good. Like, glad that works for you. Worked for me.

So a little bit of a summary here.

Yeah.

Are we supposed to document things a little bit? Okay.

Yes.

A lot bit.

Document, Document. Document. Okay.

Document.

Yes.

With those documents, make sure that they align with your policies, procedures.

You need to be consistent and every organization needs, even if you're small, you have to have a termination policy. Like, kind of, how are you going to. How does this work? So having that figured out, how does it end? Well, and how does it end. What are the steps that lead up to termination? And they can be. Again, you can skip steps. But the other part, how are the final decisions made? And then how's. What's the exit process? So, for example, if someone has a company credit card, when you terminate them, you better either turn that sucker off or take the card from them. Or both. Or both. If they have a company car, if they have a company cell phone. Oh, there's nothing better than to take someone's cell phone. That's just. That's hard. Especially if they've had it for 20 years and it's. They feel like it's their cell phone, but it's the company's cell phone. The company pays for it. So some of those. Extricating people from some of those things, but having that policy. Oh, they have keys and an alarm code. Maybe we should take those. It's important to walk through what they.

Still have keys and an alarm code to a former employer.

See, I mean, it's really important. I can tell you that at aui, we can exit you. I mean, I exit people in 90 seconds, but we can exit you. You are in your car, you are probably hitting the highway, and we've already locked everything, erased you from the website. If we're good, we can get everything done in 15 minutes. But that sounds scary.

I was about to say, but we.

Do this for a living.

That, that to me, is going to move me on to my next point here.

Okay.

Okay. Because that sounds scary. And I know you feel that this one too, when you do this, treat the departing employee with respect and kindness.

Yes. You do that. Absolutely.

Just because it's 90 seconds of ugly doesn't mean it can't be 90 seconds of kindness at the same time.

No. And when they exit, if they exit, and they exit badly, because occasionally someone's gonna get mad. Occasionally they may go to YouTube and create a rant and then you gotta deal with it. On the legal side. Do it. You have to. You have to enforce your contracts, enforce your employment agreements, enforce the separation agreements. You have to be willing to enforce. Enforce everything. Don't be like, oh, I don't want to do any of that. No, they're just mad. It'll be okay. They'll blow up. No, remove it. Done.

Done. The other one. Consult with HR or legal counsel. I know you said go with HR counsel.

HR consultant.

Yeah. And do you know one?

Yeah, just a few. Clarity hr.

Oh, good, good. That, that was the opportunity for the Shameless plug.

Thank you. Shameless plug.

The other thing is too, is, and we want to mention this, support your remaining employees. These people are there for you, with you, to help you. They, I mean, they are the whole reason that you're there. They could be scared, they could be relieved, nonetheless, have the support there for them.

Yes.

You're going through changes. They're going to need support.

Yeah.

What's one thing, real quick, and I just want a one sentence answer this. What's the one thing you should never do during a termination meeting?

You never turn it into a debate.

Love it. I love that.

Never.

It's not.

Nope. We're not going to relitigate every performance issue that you've had. We're going to keep it short. We're going to be clear. We're going to be compassionate and we're always going to have that documentation to back it up. But it's not a debate. Never.

Love it. Love it. Perfect on that. I mean, you should be able to go out and fire your entire company. No, no. You should feel confident in how you're going about determination. I know the stuff that Clarity HR does. And so, yes, if you're thinking about this, definitely reach out to them. We will put the link in the show notes. And do me a favor, take care of yourself. You can take care of someone else. We will see you very soon.

Sam.